Declassified CIA files released yesterday confirm that a number of Nazi officials were employed by Western or Soviet intelligence agencies during the Cold War.
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Documents pertaining to a total 20 officials were presented to reporters at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington by the Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records Interagency Working Group (IWG).
The group was created by the US Congress to locate and declassify such material.
Mr Richard Breitman, lead researcher on the project, said IWG researchers "did not find revelations in the Central Intelligence Agency files of the most prominent individuals," that is, Klaus Barbie, Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele, Heinrich Mueller, Kurt Waldheim and Adolf Hitler - whose file was already made public last December.
"The opening of CIA records on these six men has made it possible to effectively eliminate certain suspicions, speculation or unsupported claims about these individuals," Mr Breitman said.
"A substantial number of the second-tier individuals studied here, however, committed serious crimes on behalf of the Nazi regime," added Mr Breitman, who is also a professor of history at American University in Washington.
"Some of the 14 (second-tier) individuals tried to use their intelligence expertise, acquired in Nazi Germany and often directed against the Soviet Union, to ingratiate themselves with the Western powers" and to escape punishment, Mr Breitman said.
Mr Eli Rosenbaum, a Justice Department investigator, told reporters at the presentation of the documents that they showed Nazi criminals to have been the "real winners" of the Cold War.
AFP